It’s not just Facebook: the whole web is a risk to children
There was a time when Sheryl Sandberg could do no wrong. The chief operating officer of Facebook — or rather ‘Meta’, as it’s now been renamed — was once the poster-girl of the modern successful woman. Capable, glamorous and happy, she had made it in the male-dominated Silicon Valley.
her best-selling book Lean In was a clarion call to women everywhere to be more confident, to stand up and speak up. She was a leader people wanted to follow. I remember for months after it was released seeing everyone reading it on the commute to work. She was considered a messiah of our times, inspiring women everywhere to try harder, aim higher.
Well, it seems the halo is slipping somewhat.
Facebook has come under sustained fire in recent months for the way it has tackled online abuse, threats, censorship, safety and security. It’s been dragged in to various ignoble scandals. Being second in command there is starting to look less and less like something to brag about.
Mark Zuckerberg is starting to look like a bogeyman of the internet, rather than the quirky college kid who happened to strike gold with an idea that connected friends.
It was inevitable that Sandberg would eventually get dragged in to all this one way or another. Last week, an anonymous whistleblower claimed Sandberg gave ‘constant’ reminders to staff to think about profits as they tried to tackle toxic content. according to the source, she helped create a culture which led managers to apply this approach even to issues relating to child sexual abuse.
This really doesn’t look good. She’s coming across as just another unpleasant, uncaring corporate fat cat.
Lean in? You can feel people actively leaning away. Last week another whistleblower, Frances haugen, a former Facebook employee who released tens of thousands of damaging documents about the media giant’s inner workings, told MPs that Zuckerberg ‘has unilateral control over three billion people’ due to his unassailable position at the top of the company.
She went on to call for urgent external regulation to rein in the tech firm’s management and reduce the harm being done to society.
This seems to be a long time coming. The fact that a company — and one that makes billions each year — can operate with such pathetically scant regulation just beggars belief, especially when you think of the tremendous harm it can do, especially to young people.
It makes no sense, especially when you think of the tightly controlled health and safety regulations that govern most areas of life, particularly for children.
Schools, councils, shops, clubs and organisations are bowed down by regulation and red tape to ensure children’s safety. Try taking a kid on a school trip these days. Some schools have even banned children from playing conkers in the playground, for goodness’ sake. Yet they are allowed to roam free on websites that mean they can chat to all sorts of people from bullying peers to predatory paedophiles — how on earth has this situation been allowed to develop? We know this is a problem — it’s the reason there’s such a hoo-ha surrounding the Facebook whistleblowers — but we must remember it’s not just Facebook. In fact, while adults are fretting over the site, the kids have long since gone elsewhere. Indeed, the latest generation have never really been on Facebook at all. Most young people I speak to only have an account to stay in touch with family. They certainly don’t interact with one another on there. It’s considered a platform for oldies. That’s not to say Facebook doesn’t have its problems — it certainly does. and of course, it’s also responsible for other sites such as Instagram and Whatsapp, which certainly have
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more traction with the younger generation. But there are a multitude of other platforms, chat services and forums that are far more popular these days.
keeping up with what is going on is a minefield. Most of these sites fly well under the radar of parents and politicians. Talk to a teenager and they will mention Snapchat, TikTok, Discord, GroupMe, Whisper, Yik Yak... the list goes on and on. Many of these sites are barely monitored and, it seems to me, dangerous both in terms of bullying and adult grooming.
So what’s the answer? Yes, let’s put regulations and controls in place. and sure, let’s hold Facebook to account. But don’t forget there’s plenty more that adults don’t know about. The law needs to be far more robust to ensure companies take responsibility for the safety of their users, in the same way we’d expect any other firm or organisation that operates in a physical space to.
But also it comes down to parents — just as you would expect to know where your child is and who they are with when they leave the house, so should you expect the same transparency when it comes to the digital world. Because, it turns out, it’s far more dangerous than many of us want to admit.